The Orthodox Church is not generally well known in South Africa, which has a bewildering variety of more than 10000 different Christian groups. Yesterday we had two opportunities to make it better known among groups of other South African Christians. The first was Pecha Kucha at TGIF, at 6:30 am. Pecha Kucha is Japanese for […]

One of the things that strikes me most strongly about reactions to the death of Fidel Castro is the almost absolute division — people seem to see him either as all good or all bad. They either remember only the good things and forget the bad, or they remember only the bad things and forget […]

News stories of the Prophet of Doom, Lethebo Rabalago, spraying members of his congregation with Doom insecticide have proliferated in the last couple of weeks, along with many satirical comments on social media. As this article notes The Doom Pastor Shows Us How Self Regulation Is Failing Too Many South African Churches: Sensational stories of […]

As the National Party entrenched itself in power in South Africa after 1948, it became more and more intolerant of dissent from its policies and the ideology of apartheid that lay behind them. As a result many people were banned, or detained without trial, or imprisoned for breaking laws that were themselves evil. In 1959 […]

Here are two articles on clericalism that I think all Orthodox Christians should read, especially those who are concerned about mission and evangelism. The first article, by Abbot Tryphon, deals with clericalism in a general way, warning of the dangers — Clericalism – The Morning Offering: Orthodoxy has traditionally avoided clericalism, yet in more recent [ […]